Bulldog in top hat and monocle on forearm

Downstairs the Harbour Company's wharf was loud with gulls and the grinding of cranes, but the upstairs office smelt of ink and damp wool. Hobb pushed his top hat back with one paw, leaned over the columns and found the error in the pencil marks of young Tobias Wren, who had been paid to count and had been counting, Hobb suspected, the biscuits in his drawer instead. Overnight the tide had crept under the warehouse door and left a blue-green film across the floorboards, the colour of old bottles held up to a window.

He did not shout. Hobb had never shouted in his life, as it was beneath a gentleman in a waistcoat of that quality. He simply sat down, folded his hands on the open book and waited until Wren came back up the stairs with his face already going red. "Four shillings," Hobb said, "and one watch, which I am informed you have been wearing since Tuesday."

Wren emptied his pockets onto the blotter. The watch ticked on, unbothered, and outside the tide drew back a little further across the boards, leaving its stains like the wake of a boat that had already gone. Hobb put his monocle away, wrote the correct figure in the margin in a hand as tidy as a clipped hedge, and turned the page.